On a warm summer day in my home town I took my son-in-law PJ to favorite place, Rattlesnake Creek, one of the many canyons in the front side of the Santa Ynez mountains. I have walked this creek many times, never once seeing a rattle snake. I even chose it for a botany project in college long ago – chronicling the regrowth of plants after a brush fire. Read more…

A few weekends back I had the unique pleasure of taking a hike with my son Luke, son-in-law PJ and nephew-in-law Todd. I did a lot of hiking around California in my youth and have been looking forward to doing some more now that I live here again. Todd is an expert on Native American rock art, in particular the art of the Chumash who lived in the Santa Barbara area. He has taken me on a couple of short excursions before. This was an overnight to see some pretty special work. Read more…

It has been a few months since I gave a safari report. It is not that I have not had any in that time. It is more that I have been too busy with my new business and my safaris have been short and family related. This month I took a safari that is both of those things (short and with family) but incredibly beautiful. So I would like to share. Read more…

Here are a few pictures from my weekend safari. The Park is a zoo with many creatures in cages, lots of monkies running free, lots of people and some “wild” animals in forested paddocks that you can tour in rickety old buses. Once again my camera battery went dead and my spare was back in the parking lot. So I had to switch to my camera phone and the pictures are lousy. So this is a small set. My friend Jim took some photos and I may get them from him to add to these. In particular, I am hoping that he got a good shot of the king cobra (in a cage). It was formidable. And some shots from the butterfly garden which seemed to have fewer butterflies that the gardens around it. I have several but they are not worth showing. Aren’t you glad I told you about what I do not have to share? Here is what I have.

This is all the video I have from my encounter with a troupe of monkeys in the coffee plantation in Chikmangalur. As they appeared high in the trees above us, my camera battery died. I squeezed a little bit of video out and gave up. Just then our driver appeared, bumping down the mud road. I was able to retrieve another battery and catch a few more frames before the troupe moved on.

The video only shows a few individuals. There were about 30 in all including some babies. They are attracted to the jackfruit, though these trees they are swinging through are above the fruit. We startled them away from the fruits at first. The hooting you hear is from the monkeys mostly, though my hosts did a little bit of hooting to stir the monkeys up.

My best guess is that these are Bonnet Macaques, common to this area. Here is an excellent closeup of a mother and baby made by Satya PicMaker: http://www.treknature.com/gallery/photo150446.htm. I got nowhere near this close to the fellows, but it was still fun to watch them jumping through the trees.